We walked up to 50 strangers with something burning between their fingers and asked them to try this instead.
No pitch. No brand speech. Just a small object in a box, a question, and a camera. Here's what happened when we actually did it.
The idea was simple, and slightly stupid.
A small Dutch company called Lio had been sending us their product for months. We'd been curious about it but skeptical — it looked like a cigar made of wood, and claimed to do something we didn't quite believe. So we decided to stop thinking about it and just put it in front of strangers.
So we did.
Four days. Three cities. One box, one mic, one camera. Every time we saw someone outside a café, a bus stop, a club queue — pack in hand, or a little plastic device lit up between their fingers — we walked up.
Not "do you want to stop." Not "let us sell you something." Just: can we ask you a quick question?
Then we'd hold up the wooden thing.
Nobody knew what it was. Including us, at first.
It's called Lio.
We couldn't do the experiment without explaining what we were handing people. So here's the short version. The longer version is the rest of this article.
A wooden stick. Plant oils inside. That's the whole thing.
You hold it like a small pen. Breathe in through the top. A little bit of flavor — peppermint, cinnamon, or eucalyptus — comes out. Breathe out. Put it back in your pocket.
That's it. Nothing addictive. No vapor. No battery. No liquid. No flame. The oils sit inside a cotton wick. Nothing gets inhaled. Nothing charges. Nothing clicks.
Not a cessation product. Not a medical device. Not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any condition. Just an aromatherapy object people seem to like holding.
We kept the script exactly the same for every person.
The reactions.
Every person quoted here had something burning or buzzing between their fingers when we walked up. Clips selected from the full edit.
"Wait, what does it do? [inhales] …oh. That's not bad. It's like breathing mint. Weird. Can I keep it?"
Femke, 29
A roll-up between her fingers
"So it's just wood? [laughs] I don't get it. [tries it] Oh, okay. That actually hits the same spot. I don't know why."
Marco, 34
Disposable device in his hand
"Nah, nothing's gonna replace this for me, sorry. [tries it anyway] …huh. Alright. That's actually quite nice. I'm not stopping though."
Aisha, 42
Gold pack, half-full
"Wait — it's just the motion that I miss. So if I have something else to hold? [pauses] Yeah. I'd try this. My girlfriend would be so happy."
Joris, 24
Plastic device, half a tank left
"Oh this is cute. [inhales deeply] I like that it's heavy. It feels like something. The plastic ones feel like nothing."
Lena, 31
Self-rolled, unfinished
"Wait wait wait, explain it again? There's nothing in it? Then why does it feel like something? [tries it again] That's actually kind of genius."
Sam, 27
Peach-ice device
"I've stopped four times. Nothing stuck. [tries it, long pause] I'm not saying it works. But I'm saying my hands aren't bored right now. That's new."
Rosa, 58
Red pack, chain-lit
"Okay this is weird. I took three puffs and I put my device down without thinking. Is that supposed to happen?"
Thomas, 41
Device on a lanyard
"I'm not giving up the habit. [pockets the Lio] But I'll take this home. I might use it at work. They don't let us outside."
Priya, 33
Roll-up, unlit when we walked up
After about the fifteenth person, we started seeing the same things repeat.
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0150 / 50 DID NOT REFUSE
Nobody refused to try it.
We approached 50 people. 38 tried it on camera. The other 12 weren't hostile — they were in a rush, on a call, or waiting for someone. Not a single person told us to leave them alone.
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0234 / 38 LAUGHED FIRST
The first reaction was almost always a laugh.
At the weight. At the wood. At the fact that it looked a bit like a small cigar carved out of a chair leg. The laugh usually came before the first inhale.
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03~4 SEC TO GET IT
The second reaction was the interesting one.
After the first inhale, people stopped joking. They tried it again, more slowly. A few of them said variations of the same sentence: "oh, it's the motion." Or: "huh, that's the thing I miss." They'd figured out, in about four seconds, what the object was trying to do.
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0437 / 38 KEPT IT
Nobody handed it back.
This is the thing that stuck with us. We told every person they could keep it or give it back — we didn't mind either way. Out of 38 people who tried it, 37 kept it. The one who didn't said she was about to go on holiday and didn't want another thing in her bag. She asked if she could have one when she got home.
Here's the raw numbers from the notebook, for anyone who cares.
on the street
on camera
their pocket
No one is an actor.
— OUR NOTES · NOT A SCIENTIFIC STUDY · DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS
Maybe it was never about the substance. Maybe it's about the thing in the hand.
"I can't stop because I need what's in it."
This is the official reason. It's the reason you read in headlines. It's the reason the patches, pouches, gums, and pills are built around.
"I need something in my hand. I need something to breathe through. I need the pause."
The second a weird wooden object filled that slot, most of them visibly relaxed — without anything in their system. That's the part we didn't expect.
We're not saying Lio "works." We're saying we handed a thing with nothing in it to 38 people with a daily habit, and 37 of them didn't want to give it back. You can decide what that means.
We texted some of them back to see if they were still using it.
We had phone numbers for 18 of the participants (we asked before they left). Of those, 14 replied. Three of the replies are below, lightly edited.
We're not a health publication. We don't have a pitch about how to break the habit.
We went out with one weird object and a camera because we thought it might be funny. Four days later we came back with something we didn't quite expect:
An empty box. A camera roll of people laughing on the first inhale. And a follow-up list where most of them were still using the thing two weeks later.
That's not proof of anything. But it's the most honest data we could gather with a mic and a morning.
If you light up, or puff, or you've tried to stop and still feel like your hand is looking for something — we don't have a prescription. We just know that almost nobody gave the wooden thing back.
If you want to see the object we were handing out —
Lio is a small Dutch company making the object we kept handing out. If you want to look at it properly, here's where they live.
Visit Lio's siteCONTINUE TO LIO'S SITE →